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What went into the rebranding process?

in 2013, our Executive Director Bartley Sawatsky recommended we begin a process to rebrand our movement. A rebranding team was formed by the Fellowship Council and they began a long, prayerful process. Hundreds of leaders from our church shared ideas and perspectives during Focus Retreats in 2016. And the team was able to seek the advice of some young professional marketers who also happen to love our fellowship. This past summer (2017), the Fellowship Council approved the name "Charis Fellowship". For more information go here.

Why Charis? Why Fellowship?

We observed that we already have a nickname for ourselves... "the fellowship"! Young leaders are more globally minded than pastor generations and we already use the word "Charis" in the name of our global movement "Charis Alliance". Since Charis means Grace, it made sense you take advantage of these realities to express our grace commitment in a fresh way. Watch this...

What's next?

Wow! That's a huge question but we are so glad you asked!

New churches · New resources for planting even more churches · New tools for local churches to training leaders · Better tools to mentor and qualify pastors · Access2018 where leaders access leaders · More cohorts of leaders · Churches who are committed to helping other churches · Expansion of larger churches through campusing · A new Crisis Coalition · All these are in-the-works. Stay tuned!

Our vision for leadership development in our Fellowship of Grace Brethren churches is that we might be a fellowship of equipping churches, committed to seeing every member to rise to his full potential for Christ.

In an Equipping Church, ministry effectiveness is measured not only by how well the leaders do ministry, but by how well they equipothers to do ministry.

For many leaders, this represents a paradigm shift: the main emphasis of their training has been to prepare them for doing ministry, rather than for coaching others in ministry. As leaders, they get value from how well they do ministry; further, they can do ministry better and faster than having to equip others to do it.

However, the continuing spiritual vitality of a local church is directly related to intentionally putting into practice Ephesians 4:11-16. In this passage we have the DNA of an equipping church.

Every church is to fulfill five ministry functions: outreach, proclamation, evangelism, shepherding, and teaching. These are functions, not positions.

The Lord has given every church potential leaders to equip members to become involved in these ministries. These leaders are joints and ligaments in the body.

Equipping seeks to encourage every member to attain to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, fulfilling his role as a member of the body.

Through equipping the entire church to grows up into Christ, the Head, from whom the whole body is joined and held together by every supporting ligament.

As a result, the church grows and is built up in love, as each part does its work.

The root meaning of the term equip (katartismo) is to bond, or join together. An equipping church seeks to connect members with ministries. Getting the people involved transforms ministry consumers into ministry collaborators. The most effective way of involving people is through the creation of ministry teams, in which each member has a role to play and feels a sense of ownership.

Though some equipping occurs in one way or another in most churches, the challenge of every church is to make it a part of the church’s culture, or DNA. An Equipping Church is one in which there is 1) an intentional commitment to equipping, 2) the designation of someone to serve as an equipping coordinator, and 3) an effort to make equipping an expression of the church’s culture.

Five components of an Equipping Church:

Intercession: infusing prayer into every aspect of the equipping process.

Identification: matching the potential of the people with ministry needs.

Involvement: creating ministry teams in which each member has a role to play.

Instruction: offering training, mentoring, and coaching to those involved in teams.

Inspiration: motivating those involved through positive affirmation.

Being an equipping church is a journey, not a destination.

Would you commit to being an Equipping Church by identifying and commissioning an Equipping Coordinator (the pastor or someone he designates), who will be invited to become a member of a district-wide E-Net Coordinating Team?